Conventionally, such control has been performed which makes a decision about the magnitude of the lateral component of collision acceleration of a vehicle with side-impact sensors mounted at sides of front seats (or rear seats), and inflates side airbags/curtain airbags when the impact is great (see Patent Document 1, for example).
Alternatively, a technique is known which controls frontal collision airbags when the integral of the outputs of longitudinal acceleration sensors is equal to or greater than a low threshold value and equal to or less than a high threshold value, and when the piecewise integral of the outputs of lateral acceleration sensors is equal to or greater than a low threshold value (see Patent Document 2, for example). Another technique is known which prevents the inflation of airbags at a non-head-on collision (see Patent Document 3, for example).
Patent Document 1: Japanese patent application laid-open No. 2001-138856.
Patent Document 2: Japanese patent application laid-open No. 2004-130842.
Patent Document 3: Japanese patent application laid-open No. 7-165004/1995.
The foregoing conventional apparatuses carry out the inflation control of the airbags according to the magnitude of the right and left components in the lateral direction. Thus, even in case of a frontal collision, the airbags can inflate if a great impact is input in the lateral direction. In the frontal collision, since occupants normally move forward, the inflation of the side airbags has little occupant protecting effect, with presenting a problem of imposing a high repair cost on a user.
The present invention is implemented to solve the foregoing problems. Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an airbag control apparatus capable of preventing the accidental inflation of side airbags in the case where the occupant protecting effect is small.